We join the comrades of the Red-Green Alliance of Denmark in unequivocally condemning the attack on a meeting to debate free speech and a Jewish synagogue in Copenhagen on Saturday-Sunday 14-15 February.

Almost half of Syria’s population now requires humanitarian assistance of some kind. Almost three million people have fled Syria, with Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey dealing with increasing numbers of refugees.

Ballot papers are arriving with Unison health workers this week for voting on the derisory pay offer from the government.

As discussed previously in Solidarity, the offer for 2014/15 which was the cause of our dispute has not changed at all. The 1% [+ £200 for bands 1&2] offered for 2015/16 is still a real terms pay cut for the vast majority and comes with strings attached of negotiating on all our terms and conditions. The fact that our negotiators saw fit to even present this offer shows the weak state of our organisation.

The FBU has called a further 24 hour strike in England on Wednesday 25 February, starting at 7 am, in its long-running pensions campaign. The union has also called a demonstration at Westminster at noon on the day of the strike.

The strike was called after the union exposed a sham “guarantee” given in parliament to enable ministers to force through their unworkable proposals.

On January 29, National Union of Teachers (NUT) National Executive voted 24 to 12 not to call two days of strike action in the run up to the General Election.

In October a survey of members returned 80% in favour of strikes. This despite the failure of the NUT to develop a serious strategy to wring concessions from the Government over pensions, and then pay, since 2011.

A thousand, a million, a billion, a trillion? Paradoxically, one of the ways the HSBC bank can hope to ride out the current storm is that the numbers are so far beyond experience for most of us that we glaze over.

HSBC is under fire because of documents which have filtered through to the Guardian which show that a Swiss subsidiary facilitated, helped, and even prompted tax avoidance and money-laundering.